An almost weekly update of environmental news, particularly marine updates, with occasional splatters of transportation, indigenous, ideas of sustainability and sustainable development from around the world.

3.8.07

Whip Up Dinner, Melt A Glacier

Aug 3 2007 (TODAY)

BANGKOK - Huge haze clouds over the Indian Ocean contribute as much toatmospheric warming as greenhouse gases and play a significant role in themelting of the Himalayan glaciers, according to a study publishedyesterday.

Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan and his colleagues sent unmannedmeasuring devices into the haze pollution - known as atmospheric brownclouds - over the Indian Ocean last year.

Measuring aerosol concentrations, soot levels and solar radiation, theteam concluded that the pollution - mostly caused by the burning of woodand plant matter for cooking in South Asia - enhanced heating of theatmosphere by around 50 per cent, and contributed to about half of thetemperature increases blamed in recent decades for the glacial retreat.

Mr Ramanathan, a chief scientist at the University of California SanDiego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said his team's researchshows that the clouds are an additional factor in the melting of glaciers,along with overall global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Until this study, published in the British journal Nature, scientistsbelieved the brown clouds mostly deflected sunlight and cooled theatmosphere. But as the study now shows, the particles also absorb sunlightand warm the atmosphere much more than previously believed. - Agencies